Speech and Song

A Lecture given
by Rudolf Steiner
Dornach, December 2nd, 1922
GA 283

It is the 9th of 12 lectures given by Rudolf Steiner at various
cities from 1906 to 1923. The series of lectures is entitled:
The Essence of Music and the Experience of Tone.
They were published in German as:
Das Wesen des Musikalischen und das Tonerlebnis im Menschen.
Another name of this lecture is:
Human Expression through Tone and Word.

This lecture was translated from a shorthand report, unrevised by
the lecturer, by an unknown translator.
It is presented here with the kind permission of the Rudolf
Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach, Switzerland.
From GA# 283.

Donated by an anonymous donor, this lecture has been made available to everyone.

Speech and
Song

and the Life in Spiritual
Worlds

By RUDOLF STEINER

Lecture given at Dornach, 2nd December,
1922.

I have already pointed out
in recent lectures how certain functions or activities of the human
being, which emerge in early childhood, are in reality a
metamorphosis of activities which belong to man between death and a
new birth, i.e. in his pre-earthly life. At birth the child is
not yet fully adapted to the earthly gravitation, the earthly
conditions of equilibrium. We see the child slowly and gradually
adapt himself to these earthly conditions as he learns to stand
and walk. Thus the adaptation of the body to the position of
equilibrium for earthly life is a faculty which man does not bring
with him. He must acquire it during his earthly life.

Now we know that the
physical body of man in all its form is the result of a mighty
spiritual activity — an activity which man performs in unison
with Beings of the Higher Worlds between death and a new birth. Yet
that which man forms and creates in this activity — we may call
it in a sense the spiritual germ of his future physical earthly body
— is not so formed as already to contain the faculty of upright
gait and posture. This faculty is only incorporated in man's nature
when, after his birth, he gradually finds his way into the conditions
of equilibrium, into the forces of earthly existence. For in the
pre-earthly life, balance or equilibrium is not the same as it is on
earth, where it signifies the power to walk and stand. In the
pre-earthly life, balance and equilibrium signify the relation
man has to the Angeloi, Archangeloi and so forth — to the
Beings of the Hierarchies — a relation manifold and
differentiated according as one feels oneself drawn more towards one
Being or more towards another. This constitutes the state of
equilibrium in the spiritual worlds. And this, man loses in a certain
sense when he descends on to the earth. In the mother's womb he is
neither in the conditions of equilibrium of his spiritual
existence, nor is he yet in the conditions of equilibrium of his
earthly life. He has left the former and has not yet entered into the
latter.

It is similar in the case
of speech. The language which we speak here on earth is, of course,
essentially adapted to earthly conditions. In the first place it is
an expression of our earthly thoughts. These earthly thoughts contain
earthly information and earthly knowledge; and to all this our
speech or language is adapted during our life on earth. But in the
pre-earthly life as I have already explained, man has a very
different language — one which does not go from within
outwards, which does not mainly follow the out-breathing process, but
the spiritual in-breathing or inspiration (which we observe to
correspond to breathing in the pre-earthly life). Thus in pre-earthly
existence, man's language is a living with the cosmic Logos; it is a
living within the cosmic Word — the cosmic language from out of
which all things of the world are made.

This too we lose when we
descend on to the earth. We lose the life within the cosmic language,
and acquire here on earth the language which serves us in the first
place to express our thoughts — our earthly thoughts. This
earthly language serves our mutual understanding —
understanding as between human beings, all of whom are living on the
earth.

And so it is with our
thoughts themselves — our earthly thinking. Here on earth, our
thinking is gradually adapted to the earthly conditions. In
pre-earthly existence on the other hand, our thought is a
living within the creative thoughts of the Cosmos.

Walking, Speaking and
Thinking: — let us now consider, of these three, the middle
member — human speech. We may indeed say that in speech there
lies a most essential element of all earthly culture and
civilisation. By speech, human beings come together here on
earth, and one man finds the way to another. Bridging the gulf that
lies between, soul meets with soul through speech. We feel that we
have in speech something essential to our nature here on earth. And
indeed our speech is the earthly reflection of our life in the Logos,
in the cosmic Word. Thus it is particularly interesting to understand
the connection of what man attains by great efforts here on earth, as
speech and language, with the metamorphosis of speech and language
yonder in the pre-earthly life. Indeed, when we study this
relationship, we are led to perceive how the human being is inwardly
constructed and organised out of the very element of spoken sound and
music. And it is a happy coincidence at the present moment that in
the cosmological studies we have pursued for some weeks, I can to-day
insert the chapter on the expression of the human being through the
words of speech and the sounds of song. It is our great pleasure in
these days to be having so excellent a performance of song, here in
our Goetheanum building. [Song-Recital by Frau
Werbeck-Svärdstrom and her sisters.] Allow me therefore
to-day, if I may say so, to express my personal gratitude for this
happy artistic event in our midst, by telling you a little of the
connection between the speech and song of man here on earth, and his
life in that element which corresponds to the Sound in speech and
song, in the spiritual world.

If we study the human
organism as it stands before us here on earth, we know that it is
through and through an image of the spiritual. Everything here
— not only what man bears in himself, but also what surrounds
him in external nature — is an image of the spiritual. Now when
man expresses himself in speech or in song, he is really manifesting
his whole nature — body, soul and spirit — not only
outwardly but inwardly. In all that he brings forth by way of sound
— whether the articulate sounds of speech or the musical notes
of song — the full human being is in fact contained. How deeply
and fully he is contained, we only begin to see when we understand
more in detail what the human being is in that he speaks or
sings.

Let us take our start from
speech. In the historic evolution of mankind, speech, as we know,
proceeded from something which originally was song. The farther we go
back into pre-historic ages, the more does speech become recitative
and eventually song. In distant ages of human evolution upon earth,
the expression of the human being through sound was not really
differentiated into song and speech, but these two were one. What is
so often referred to as the primeval language of man was such that we
might as well speak of it as a primeval song.

But we will now study
speech in its present condition, where it has become very far
removed from the pure element of song, and is steeped in the prosaic
and intellectual quality. If we take speech as we have it to-day, we
find in it two essential elements — consonant and vowel, All
that we bring forth in speech is composed of a consonantal and of a
vowel element. Now, the consonantal element is in reality entirely
based upon the finer plastic structure of our body. Whether we
pronounce a B or a P, an L or an M, in each case it rests upon the
fact that something or other in our body has a certain plastic form.
Nor is this confined by any means to the organs of speech and song
alone. These organs only represent the highest culmination of what is
here meant. For when the human being brings forth a musical note in
song or an articulate sound in speech, his whole body really takes
part in the process. The process that goes on in the organ of speech
or song is but the final culmination of something that is taking
place through the whole human being. Our human body therefore, as to
its plastic form and structure, may really be conceived as
follows. We take all the consonants there are in any language. They
are always variations of twelve primary consonants, and indeed in the
Finnish language you still find these twelve preserved very nearly in
their pure, original nature; eleven are quite distinct, only the
twelfth has grown a little indistinct, but it, too, is still present.
Now, these twelve original consonants when rightly understood (and
each of them can at the same time be conceived as a form), these
twelve consonants taken together really represent the entire plastic
structure of the human body. We may say therefore, without speaking
figuratively in the least: — the human being is plastically
expressed by the twelve primeval consonants.

What then is this human
body? From the point of view — the musical point of view
— we are now taking, the human body is nothing else than a
great musical instrument. Even the external musical instruments
— the violin or any other instrument of music — even
these you can best understand by somehow perceiving in their form and
shape a consonant or consonants. You must see them, as it were, built
up out of the consonants. When we refer to the consonant element in
speech, there must always be something in our feeling reminiscent of
musical instruments; and the totality, the harmony of all consonants,
represents the plastic sculpture of the human body.

And the vowel element
— in this we have the soul which plays upon the instrument. The
soul provides the vowel nature. Thus when you embody in speech the
consonant and vowel elements, you have in every manifestation
of speech or of song a self-expression of the human being. The soul
of the human being plays in vowels upon the consonants of the musical
instrument — the human body.

Now if, as I said, we are
considering the speech that forms a part of present-day civilisation,
we find that our soul, whenever it brings forth vowel sounds, makes
use to a very great extent of the brain, the system of head and
nerves. In earlier ages of human evolution, this was not the case to
the same degree.

Let us consider for a
minute the system of head and nerves. The whole structure of the head
is permeated by forces which run along the nerve-strands. Now the
activity which the nerve-strands here develop is entered and
permeated by another activity, namely that which comes about through
our breathing-in the air. The air which we breathe in passes through
the spinal canal right up into the head, and the impact of the
breathing beats in unison with the movements that are executed along
the nerve-strands. Pressing upward to the head through the spinal
canal, the current of the breath is perpetually meeting with the
activity of the nerves in the head. We have not a separate nervous
activity, and a separate breathing activity; we have in the head a
harmony and mutual resonance of breathing activity and nervous
activity. Now the man of to-day, having grown prosaic in his ordinary
life, sets more store by the nerve forces than by the breathing
impulses. He makes more use of his nervous system when he speaks; he
permeates with nerve, if we might put it so, the instrument which
through its consonantal nature shapes and forms the vowel
currents.

In earlier ages of human
evolution, this was not the case. Man lived not so much in his
nervous system; he lived in the breathing system. Hence the primeval
language was more like song. Now when the man of to-day sings, he
takes what he does in speech — where he permeates it with the
nervous activity of the nervous system — and restores it to the
current of the breath. He consciously calls into activity this second
stream — the breathing. It is the continuation of the breathing
into the head which is directly called into activity when, as in
song, the uttering of the vowel is added to the bringing forth of the
note. But here in song man does not leave the element of breath; he
takes back his now prosaic language into the poetic and artistic
nature of the rhythmic breathing process. The poet of to-day still
strives to maintain the rhythm of the breath itself in the way he
shapes and moulds the language of his poems. And he who writes for
song takes it all back again into the breathing process (including
the breathing process of the head). Thus we may say, the very process
which man must undergo here on earth, in that he adapts his language
to earthly conditions, is reversed in a certain sense when we pass
from speech to song. Song is indeed a. real recollection —
though by earthly means — of that which we experienced in the
pre-earthly life. For in our rhythmic system we are far nearer to the
spiritual world than in our thinking system. And it is of course the
thinking system which takes hold of speech when speech becomes
prosaic.

When we utter the vowel
sounds, we press what is living in our soul down into the body; and
the body, by adding the consonantal element, does but provide the
musical instrument for our soul to use. You will certainly have the
feeling that in every vowel there is something of the soul, immediate
and living. The vowel can be taken by itself. The consonant on the
other hand is perpetually longing for the vowel, tending towards it.
The plastic instrument of the body is in fact a dead thing until the
vowel nature — the soul — strikes its chords.

You can see this in
detailed examples. Take for instance, in certain dialects of Middle
Europe, the word mir as in the phrase Es geht mir gut.
When I was a little boy, I simply could not conceive that the word
should be written as it is. I always wrote it mia; for in the
r the longing towards the a is quite inherent. Thus
when we perceive the human organism as the harmony of all consonants,
we find in it everywhere the longing for the vowel nature, that is to
say for the soul. Now we are driven to ask, what is the origin of all
these things?

This human body, in the
whole arrangement of its plastic structure here on earth, has to
adapt itself to the earthly conditions. It is shaped as it is,
because the earthly position of equilibrium and the whole system of
the earthly forces would not allow it to be otherwise. And yet all
the time it is shaped out of the spiritual world. This matter can be
understood only by deeper spiritual-scientific research. The
soul-nature, manifesting itself through the vowels, strikes upon the
consonantal nature, which is plastically shaped and formed in
accordance with earthly conditions.

If we lift ourselves into
the spiritual world, in the way I have described in my book
Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment,
we first attain Imagination or Imaginative Cognition, as I have often
told you. Now when we reach this point, we find that we have lost the
consonants. We still possess the vowels, but the consonants —
to begin with at any rate — are lost. In the Imaginative
condition, we have in effect lost our physical body — i.e. we
have lost the consonants. In the Imaginative world, the consonants no
longer appeal to us. To describe what we have in that world
adequately in spoken words, our words would have to consist, to begin
with, of vowels only.

We have lost the
instrument, and we enter a pure world of sound, where the vowels are
indeed coloured and shaded in manifold variety, but all the
consonants of earth are in effect dissolved away in the vowels.

You will therefore find
that in those languages which were not yet so far removed from the
primeval, the things of the super-sensible world were named in words
consisting of vowels only. The word Jahve for example did not
contain our present form of J or V. It consisted only
of vowels, and was half-scanned, half-sung. We enter here into a
vowel-language which it is only natural to sing. And when we reach
from Imaginative to Inspired Cognition — when therefore we
receive the direct manifestations of the spiritual world
— then all the consonants we have on earth are changed into
something quite different. The consonants, as such, we lose. But in
place of it, a new thing comes forth in the spiritual
perception which comes to us in Inspiration. And this new thing
we find to be none other than the spiritual counterparts of the
consonants.

But the spiritual
counterparts of the consonants are not there between the vowels; they
live in them. In your speech here on earth you have the
consonants and vowels side by side. You lose the consonants as you
ascend into the spiritual world. You live your way into a vowel world
of song. To put it truly one must say, “It sings,”
for you yourself no longer sing. The World itself becomes cosmic
song. But all this vowel world is variedly coloured or shaded in a
spiritual sense. In effect, there is something living in the vowels
— namely the spiritual counterparts of the consonants.

Here on earth we have the
vowel sound A for example, and — if you will the note C sharp
in a certain octave. But when we reach the spiritual world, we do not
have one A, or one C sharp in a given octave, but countless ones
differing in inner quality. For it is another thing, whether a Being
from the Hierarchy of the Angeloi speaks A to one, or a Being of the
Hierarchy of the Archangeloi, or some other Being. Outwardly the
manifestation is the same, but it is filled in each case with a
different inner soul.

We may say therefore:
— Here on earth we have our body. The vowel sound strikes into
it. Yonder in the spiritual world we have the vowel sound; and the
soul strikes into it, and lives in it, so that the sound becomes the
body for the soul. You are immersed in cosmic music, cosmic song; you
are within the creative sound — within the creative Word.

Let us now consider sound
as it is on earth, including spoken sound. Sound has its earthly life
in the element of air. It is, however, but a childish conception of
Physics to believe that the peculiar forms in the air are the reality
of sound. It is really childish. Imagine, for a moment, you have a
piece of ground, and on it stands a man. The ground is most certainly
not the man, yet the ground must be there for the man to stand on.
Without it, the man himself could not be there. It will not therefore
occur to you to seek to understand the man by examining the soil
beneath his feet.

In the same way the air
must be there for the sound to have a basis of support. Just as man
stands on the soil — only in a rather more complicated way the
sound has its “soil,” its necessary basis or resistance
in the air. For the sound itself, the air signifies no more than does
the soil for the man who stands on it. The sound presses forward to
the air, and the air gives it the possibility to stand. But the sound
itself is spiritual. Just as the man is different from the earthly
soil on which he stands, so, is the sound different from the air upon
which it stands — in which it finds its support though of
course in a more complicated way, in a manifold and varied way.

Through the fact that we on
earth can only speak and sing by means of the air, we have in the
airy forming of the sound the earthly image of a thing of soul and
spirit. The soul-and-spirit of sound belongs to the super-sensible
world, and that which dwells here in the air is fundamentally the
body of the sound. We need not therefore be surprised if we find the
sound again in the spiritual world, though shorn of that which comes
from the earthly — the earthly consonant-articulation. The
vowel only is carried over there. The sound as such in its spiritual
content goes with us when we rise into the spiritual world, only
there it becomes filled with soul. Instead of being shaped and
moulded outwardly by the nature of the consonants, the sound is
inwardly ensouled.

Now all this runs parallel
with man's entry into the spiritual world in the widest sense. Think
for a moment, my dear friends, man passes through the gate of death.
The consonants he soon leaves behind, but the vowels — and
especially the manifold intonations of the vowels — these he
experiences all the more strongly, only with this difference. He no
longer feels the sound proceeding from his own larynx, but he feels
that there is singing all around him, and that in every sound of the
song, he himself is living. It is so in the very first days after man
passes through the gate of death. He is dwelling in a musical
element, which is at the same time an element of speech; and this
musical element reveals ever more and more as it becomes filled with
living soul from the spiritual world.

Now, as I have told you,
man's going forth into the Universe after he has passed through the
gate of death is at the same time a passing from the earthly world
into the world of the stars.

When we describe such a
thing as this, we seem to be speaking in images, but our images none
the less are reality. Imagine here the Earth. Around it are the
planets, then the heavens of the fixed stars, conceived from time
immemorial — and rightly so — as the Animal Circle or
Zodiac. Man standing on the Earth sees the planets and the fixed
stars in their shadowed radiance. He sees them from the Earth —
or, shall we say, with due respect to earthly man, he sees them
“from in front?” (The Old Testament, as you know,
expressed it differently.) After death, when man goes farther and
farther from the earth, he gradually comes to see the planets as well
as the fixed stars “from behind.” But there he does not
see these points of light or surfaces of light which are seen from
the earth. Rather does he see the spiritual — the corresponding
spiritual Beings. On all sides it is a world of spiritual Beings.
Wherever he looks back, whether it be towards Saturn, Sun or Moon, or
towards Aries, Taurus and the other constellations, he sees from
yonder side the spiritual Beings.

But this seeing is at the
same time a hearing; and when he says: — Man sees from the
other side — or from behind — Moon, Venus, Aries, Taurus
and so forth, we might equally well express it thus: — Man
hears the Beings, who have their dwelling in these heavenly bodies,
resounding forth into the cosmic spaces.

Try to imagine it in its
totality. (It really looks as though we were speaking figuratively,
but we are not, it is absolutely real.) Imagine yourself out there in
the Cosmos — the planetary world farther from you now, the
Zodiac with its twelve constellations nearer. From all the heavenly
bodies it is singing, speaking as it sings to you, singing as it
speaks; and all your perception is a listening to the speaking song,
the singing speech of the World. You look out in the direction of
Aries, and as you do so, receive the impression of a consonant
soul-nature. Behind Aries maybe, is Saturn, a vowel element of soul.
And in this vowel element as it radiates out into the cosmic space
from Saturn — in it there dwells the soul-and-spirit
Consonant: — Aries, or in another instance, Taurus. Thus you
have the planetary sphere singing to you in vowels — singing
forth into the cosmic spaces; and the fixed stars permeate the song
of the planetary sphere with soul from the consonants. Picture it to
yourselves as vividly as you can: — the sphere of the fixed
stars at rest, and behind it the wandering planets. Whenever a planet
in its course passes a constellation of the fixed stars, there bursts
forth not a single note, but a whole world of sound. Then as the
planet passes on from Aries to Taurus, a different world of sound
rings forth. But behind it there follows, let us say, another planet:
— Mars. Mars passing through the constellation of Taurus,
causes a different world of sounds to ring forth once more. Thus you
have in the heavens of the fixed stars, or the Zodiac, a wondrous
cosmic instrument of music, while from behind it our planetary Gods
are playing upon this instrument.

We may truly say, my dear
friends, when man down here on earth takes back his speech (which is
now formed for his earthly needs, just as his walking is transformed,
for earthly needs, from his spiritual power of orientation in the
Cosmos) — when therefore man takes speech back again into the
element of song, he really inclines himself to that cosmic
pre-earthly existence from out of which he is born for earthly life.
And indeed, all Art comes before man in this sense. It is as though,
whenever he expresses himself in Art, he were to say,
“’Tis human destiny — and rightly so that man as he
begins his earthly course of life is placed into the midst of earthly
conditions and must adapt himself to these. But in Art he goes back
again a little step, leaves the earthly life to take its course
around him, and retreating for a moment approaches once more the
world of Soul and Spirit — the pre-earthly life from which he
has come forth.”

We do not understand Art,
my dear friends, unless we feel in it the longing to experience the
Spiritual — though it be but manifested, to begin with, in a
world of beautiful semblance. Our creative fancy, whereby we develop
all artistic things, is at bottom nothing else than the power of
clairvoyance in an earthly form. We are tempted to say: — As
sound dwells on earth in the element of air, so it is with the nature
of the soul itself. That which is truly spiritual in the pre-earthly
life has its earthly dwelling in the image of the spiritual. For when
man speaks, he makes use of his whole body. The consonant nature
becomes in him the plastic sculpture of the human frame, and the Soul
makes use of the current of the breath which does not enter into
solid form, to play upon this plastic instrument of music and now, in
a twofold way we can turn once more to the Divine, what we thus are
as human beings speaking upon earth.

Take the consonantal human
frame. Suppose we loosen it as it were from the solid form wherein
the earthly forces — gravity and the like — or the
chemical forces in the foodstuffs have enchained it. Suppose we
liberate the consonant nature that permeates the human being for so
we may now describe it. When we place a lung on the dissection table
we find chemical substances in it, which we can investigate by
chemical methods. But this is not the lung. What is the lung? It is a
consonant, spoken forth out of the Cosmos, which has taken plastic
form. The heart, if we lay it on the dissection table, consists
of cells which we can investigate chemically and find the substances
composing it. But this is not the heart. The heart again is a
consonant — another consonant, spoken forth out of the Cosmos.
And if we conceive the whole twelve consonants, cosmically
spoken and resounding forth, we have in all essentials the
human bodily frame.

Thus as we look to the
consonants, if we have the necessary clairvoyant power of imagination
to see them in their real connection, there arises before us the
human body in its plastic shape. If then we take the consonants out
of the human being, we have the Art of Sculpture. If on the other
hand we take the breath, which the soul uses to play upon the bodily
instrument in song — if we take the vowel nature out of the
human being, there arises the musical art, the Art of Song.

Once more: — Take the
Consonant-nature out of the human being, and there arises Form, which
you must mould in plastic art. Take the Vowel-nature out of the human
being, and there arises Song — Music, which you must sing. Man
as he stands before us here on earth proceeds out of the two Cosmic
Arts — a Cosmic Art of Sculpture from the one side, and a
cosmic Art of Song or Music from the other. Two kinds of spiritual
Beings join their activity together. The one provides the instrument,
the other plays upon it; the one forms and moulds the instrument, the
other plays upon it.

Can we wonder that in olden
time, when things like these were felt, it was said of the greatest
of all artists, Orpheus, that his command over the soul was such that
he was able, not only to use the ready-moulded human body as an
instrument, but to cast even amorphous matter into plastic forms
— forms which correspond to the notes of his music.

My dear friends! You will
understand that when we describe such things as these we must depart
a little in our use of words from what is usual in this prosaic age.
Nevertheless what I have said is not intended in a figurative or
symbolic but in a most real sense. These things are indeed such as I
have described them, albeit to describe them we must sometimes bring
our language into greater flow and movement than is customary in its
use to-day.